Category Archives: Science & Technology

Google gets into local news

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Google News now allows you to localize a section of the stories. Scroll down just beneath the fold for the box to type in your city or zip code.

“This is pretty huge, folks, and it spotlights the need for everybody in the local news business to adopt best practices when it comes to unbundled distribution,” writes Terry Heaton. True enough, as Google News ranked #9 in Nielsen-Netratings for December — higher than USAToday.com and WashingtonPost.com.

If you’re a local news guy and look at this and say, “Ah, but they missed some stories!” … you’re missing the point.

The doctor will iChat you now

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My former family physician was/is a very wired guy. Very web/tech savvy. That was handy because I could shoot him an email when I had a question and he’d respond. When he hung up his stethoscope, I gave up any notion of finding another doc similarly disposed.

I’m pleased to report that my new doc (who must remain nameless) is equally geeked out. So when he suggested we might try a “virtual office visit,” I was surprised and delighted.

We did a little trial run this morning (not him or me in the photo). I had a few questions and he answered them. It was like sitting in his examining room. Of course, there will be times when he’ll need to lay on hands but for  a lot of doctor-patient communication, video chat works fine.

Is this the future of medicine? Who knows. Certainly not for everyone. But for the right physician and the right patient… it’s a pretty efficient use of resources and time.

“Big Brother” software knows if you’re happy

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Microsoft is developing what a British newspaper (TimesOnline) describes as “Big Brother” software that will allow employers remotely to monitor their workers’ productivity, competence and physical well-being to a degree never before seen.

Among other data, wireless sensors will provide employers with workers’ heart rates and stress level, and determine whether they are smiling or frowning.

“The systems work not only through desktop or laptop computers but even through mobile phones or handheld PCs, meaning that even out of the office the employee can still be monitored. In its most advanced format, the system will monitor users’ private interests.

The system works by recording and analyzing what words and numbers are used or websites visited, and by watching the user’s heart rate, breathing, body temperature, facial expressions and blood pressure. The patent application explains: “The system can also automatically detect frustrations or stress in the user via physiological and environmental sensors and then offer or provide some assistance accordingly.”

This just seems to far-out and scary to be true. For the record… I am happier than I appear.

“Instead of shouting the message, hide it”

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Will we still get carpet bombed by mindless 30 second commercials in the future? (And by future I mean a couple of weeks from now.) Seems unlikely, but how will savvy marketers reach –and more importantly– engage us? How do you “reach people who are so media-saturated they block all attempts to get through.”

Perhaps with alternate reality games (ARG’s). That’s the subject of a fascinating article by Frank Rose in this month’s Wired Magazine (Issue 16.01).

“The initial clue was so subtle that for nearly two days nobody noticed it. On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails’ European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled “i am trying to believe.” Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing “iamtryingtobelieve.com” into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site’s contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: “I’m drinking the water. So should you.” Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?”

I’m not a gamer. At all. But I love shit like this. Reminds me of the viral video snippets in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition. The Wired article is well worth the read.

Make iPhone listen to radio, tell you what’s playing

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“You’re riding in the car and a great song comes on the radio. You’re dying to know what it is so you can go buy it ASAP but there’s no satellite radio receiver to tell you what’s playing. How can you find out what song it is? Whip out your iPhone, put it near the car speakers, and watch the screen. Poof! There’s the song, artist, and album.” — TUAW.COM

Okay. This could make me trade in my Tracfone. iPhoner Tom promises to try this out and let me know how it works.

Google yourself

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Why? This from Seth Godin…

If you’re a salesperson, your prospects already do.
If you’re looking for a job, your prospective employers already do.
If you’ve got a job, your co-workers already do.

What do they see? Do you know?

…and this from Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism)…

“If you’re a journalist — or a journalism student who hopes to enter the field — this should concern you. First, what results do you get when you Google yourself (first name, last name, no quotation marks)? Most important, what are the top two or three links? I hope they do not go to pages about you that make you look like an idiot, a sex fiend, or a drunk.”

They both offer suggestions on how to improve your Google juice.

Doc: “The only real social works are personal ones”

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So says Doc Searls. I’ve been waiting for someone smarter than I to put into words my “issues” with social networks (Facebook, My Space, etc). The focus of this post is the effort by companies to use social networks for marketing.

“…today’s “social networks” look to me like yesterday’s online services. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the rest? Facebook to me is just AOL done right. Or done over, better. But it’s still a walled garden. It’s still somebody’s private space. Me, I’d rather take it outside, where the conversation is free and open to anybody.”

“…the thing companies need to do most is stop being all “strategic” about how their people communicate. Stop running all speech through official orifices. Some businesses have highly regulated speech, to be sure. Pharmaceuticals come to mind. But most companies would benefit from having their employees talk about what they do. Yet there are still too many companies where employees can’t say a damn thing without clearing it somehow. And in too many companies employees give up because the company’s communications policy is modeled on a fort, complete with firewalls that would put the average dictatorship to shame. If a company wants to get social, they should let their employees talk. And trust them.”

What he said. Truth be told, the company I work for has “highly regulated speech.” And no shortage of good reasons for it, but I agree (with Doc) that we would be stronger if our employees could “talk about what they do.” There’s more to the post than the graphs I pulled. Read it if you’re interested in social networks.

Ubiquitous computing, blended reality

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“Totally ubiquitous computing. One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real, the virtual from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible. The distinction between cyberspace and that which isn’t cyberspace is going to be unimaginable. When I wrote Neuromancer in 1984, cyberspace already existed for some people, but they didn’t spend all their time there. So cyberspace was there, and we were here. Now cyberspace is here for a lot of us, and there has become any state of relative nonconnectivity. There is where they don’t have Wi-Fi.

In a world of superubiquitous computing, you’re not gonna know when you’re on or when you’re off. You’re always going to be on, in some sort of blended-reality state. You only think about it when something goes wrong and it goes off. And then it’s a drag.”

— From Rolling Stone interview with William Gibson

Websites: “great” and “good enough”

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Seth Godin on how to create a great website and how to create a good enough website. A few of my favorite nuggets:

Fire the committee. No great website in history has been conceived of by more than three people. Not one. This is a dealbreaker.

Many websites say, “look at me.” Your goal ought to be to say, “here’s what you were looking for.”

Start with design. Don’t involve the programming team until you’re 90% done with the look and feel of your pages.

(Do) not to create an original design. There are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there’s one that you can start with? If your organization can’t find a website that you all agree can serve as a model, you need to stop right now and find a new job.

iMac before and after

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Help Desk Eric installed my new iMac (24 inch) yesterday. Getting the iMac at work was one of Life’s Pleasant Little Surprises. Phil (our head IT guy) came me a few weeks ago to let me know I was up for a hardware refresh and gave me the option of an iMac. I almost said no.

Learfield COO Roger Gardner opted for an iMac and that –I suspect– paved the way for me. As far as I know, we’re the only two in the company with a Mac on the desktop.

This is an example of what a great IT department we have a Learfield. Instead of taking a we-only-do-Windows stance, they’re open to trying something new. In my case, it makes a lot of sense, because most of the stuff I do can be done a little easier/better on the Mac than the PC.

I still have Windows XP running (on VMware). This means I have to adapt to sliding back and forth between Windows and OSX. It’s gonna take some getting used to.

The iMac is a magnificent piece of hardware. Feels more like a piece of sculpture than a machine. But we won’t go there.

The Office-Cam is down for now. Maybe for good. I’ve got a PC in the office as well and once we get it back online, I might turn the Office-Cam back on.

I’m looking forward to doing some video chats with those of you who have the capability and interest. Email me and I’ll send my AIM name.

What else… Oh yeah, the new iMac keyboard. I love it. Didn’t think I would be it feels great and works well.

So there you have it. Two operating systems running on one sleek device. Best of both worlds. Stay tuned.